Why are postseason baseball games so long?

October 18, 2009 6:38 PM

Why are postseason baseball games so long? (Data inside.)

As I start to write this question, it's 9:09 pm. The Phillies and Dodgers started their game tonight at 8:07 pm and just finished the second inning. At this rate (31 minutes per innings) the game will take around four and a half hours.

Now, it's 6-0 Phillies, and it takes time to get all those men on base, so this isn't typical. But in Major League Baseball, playoff games in general seem to take longer than regular-season games.

Last year's postseason game times (obtained somewhat laboriously from baseball-reference.com):
World Series: 3:23, 3:05, 3:41, 3:08, 3:28
NLCS: 2:36, 3:33, 2:57, 3:44, 3:14
ALCS: 3:25, 5:27 (11), 3:23, 3:07, 4:08, 3:48, 3:31
NLDS (Phillies-Brewers): 2:39, 3:00, 3:31, 2:53
NLDS (Dodgers-Cubs): 3:10, 3:10, 3:03
NLDS (Rays-White Sox): 3:10, 3:10, 3:07, 3:13
NLDS (Red Sox-Angels): 3:14, 3:51, 5:19 (12), 2:50

If you just glance at this, you see that games over three hours predominate. Median game length is 3:13; mean is 3:24.

For comparison, the median length of games played by the same eight teams during the regular season was 2:53, the mean 2:55. (In the interest of full disclosure, games between two of those teams are counted twice.)

Why are postseason games longer? More pitching changes? Longer breaks between innings? (They don't seem longer, but an extra thirty seconds at every commercial break is ten minutes or so over the course of a game.) Something else I haven't thought of?

posted by madcaptenor to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (11 answers total)

more commercials...
posted by HuronBob at 6:41 PM on October 18, 2009 [2 favorites]

It's probably a number of things compounded, most of which you've already noted.

- Longer commercial breaks ("There are two-and-a-half minutes of commercials between each half inning, which adds up to more than 40 minutes of ads", via
- More pitching changes
- More time between pitches
- More meetings on the mound
posted by csimpkins at 6:48 PM on October 18, 2009

I think it's a combination of more pitching changes, generally more competitive games, more commercials, and a more deliberate pace.
posted by ORthey at 6:48 PM on October 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

This is further down the list of factors (the ones mentioned are all more significant), but they're less likely to call/postpone a postseason game for rain. The scheduling is so tightly controlled by the more lucrative TV contracts during the postseason that they'll make every effort to play through bad weather if it's possible. That means waiting out delays instead of just calling it a night.
posted by aswego at 6:54 PM on October 18, 2009

Response by poster: aswego: If we're going there, (the first half of) game 5 of last year's World Series definitely was slowed down when, every half-inning or so, the grounds crew would come out and put down some fresh dirt. So you're on to something.

(And it was slowed down by the two-day rain delay in the middle of the game, but the times don't reflect that.)
posted by madcaptenor at 7:06 PM on October 18, 2009

I would bet that there are more pitches per batter in the playoffs because you have better pitchers against better batters on average than in the regular season. That means more foul balls, and more time.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:43 PM on October 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

Realize that baseball players and managers really, honestly, truly don't give a shit how long games are. Pressure gets ratcheted up in the playoffs. Every move is scrutinized and self-scrutinized. You adjust your batting glove between pitches? Better do it twice. The opposing team just inserted a pinch-runner? Take a few extra moments to rest your pitcher, and maybe have the catcher come out and talk to him.

Most importantly, pitching changes, pinch-hitters/runners and defensive switches are far more frequent, because with a definite finish line to the season at hand, concerns about working a guy too hard or too little go right out the window.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 8:38 PM on October 18, 2009

In the regular season (save the last few weeks, depending upon standings) a game that started like tonight's would probably have a slow few first innings as the starting pitcher got pummelled, but would then be played under baseball's unwritten no-rubbing-it-in rules: i.e. clear the benches to give starters a rest, no stealing bases or small-ball from the side that's leading, etc. And while I wouldn't accuse a team of giving up, there are definitely times in the regular season -- the end of a long road stint, for instance -- when you can detect an itchiness to get on the plane home.

In the postseason, everything counts for more, and the old cliché about "no tomorrow" holds: every pitch and every sign from the base coaches is double-checked, every at-bat matters, nobody wants to be pulled to spend the rest of the game in the dugout. Throw in commercials, and there's your 3:12 game.
posted by holgate at 8:45 PM on October 18, 2009 [1 favorite]

I feel that in relation to the NLCS, it has to do with a phenomenon commonly referred to as the -

JT HIRE

This is also known as the "Joe Torre - Head Inside Rectum Effect".

It requires Dodger pitchers to stay in games longer than acceptable... by any sense of reason. This allows for more hits and runs by the opposing team, thus lengthening the time of a normal baseball game.
posted by Bighappyfunhouse at 9:46 PM on October 18, 2009

Interesting article on attempts to shorten regular-season games. You can assume no one in the post-season is doing any of the things mentioned in that article. Also this will skew comparisons:

they also appear more on nationally televised games than any other team, and those games come with 2-minute, 25-second commercials between innings instead of the standard 2-minute, 5-second variety. That’s six minutes a game in pure capitalism.

posted by smackfu at 6:18 AM on October 19, 2009

I think the two factors, in addition the very valid one that Smackfu mentions¹ are:

• Holgate's comment. Everything counts so everything is deliberate. There's no one thing that increase time that much but everything takes a moment longer. This phenomenon occurs during regular season games between big rivals, notably during Yankee/Red Sox games.
• This is a supersimplification, but the teams that do well in baseball are the teams that have players who don't make outs. More pitches are thrown, and the game lasts longer. Even when they DO get out they see more pitches and the games last longer. By the postseason, generally speaking, the only teams left are teams that see lots of pitches.

¹ That quote undersells the math: 20 seconds times 2 breaks per inning times nine innings = 6, PLUS another (longer) break for every mid-inning pitching change, and in the postseason managers are probably more apt to make more changes.
posted by dirtdirt at 7:38 AM on October 19, 2009